August, 1755. Newcastle, on the north bank of the Tyne. In the fields, men and women are getting the harvest in. Sunlight, or rain. Scudding clouds and backbreaking labour. Three hundred feet underground, young Charles Hutton is at the coalface. Cramped, dust-choked, wielding a five-pound pick by candlelight. ...
Mary Eleanor Bowes, ancestor of the Queen, was brought up at the luxurious estate of Gibside in County Durham. Known as the heiress of 'all the wealth of the North', it was perhaps inevitable that she became prey to fortune hunters. In 1767 John Lyon, 9th Earl of Strathmore, married her. The marriage lasted nine years, but it was not a happy one.